Fighting the Criminalization of Communities
Understanding & Combating Carceral Approaches
- Ruth Wynn Woodward Jr. Chair Event
- Dr Liat Ben-Moshe in conversation with Vancouver community organizers Aero Marion and Ryan Sudds. Moderated by A.J. Withers.
- March 14, 2024, SFU Goldcorp Centre
It is widely acknowledged that housing is unfordable to many and social assistance is painfully low; yet homelessness is commonly attributed to individual pathologies - especially addiction and mental illness. Liat Ben-Moshe鈥檚 work demonstrates the argument 鈥渄einstitutionalization has led to the homelessness crisis鈥� is a myth. She also links this issue to broader issues of policing, criminalization and white supremacy. Ben-Moshe鈥檚 work is especially relevant to what鈥檚 happening in Vancouver. Community organizers will discuss carceral (un)housing in Vancouver and engage in conversation with Ben-Moshe about the criminalization of marginalized communities and resistance.
Fighting the Criminalization of Communities: Full Event, Including Q & A
Speakers:
Liat Ben-Moshe is an interdisciplinary scholar-activist working at the intersection of disability/madness, incarceration/decarceration and abolition. She is an Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, author of Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition (2020) and co-editor of Disability Incarcerated (2014). For more, visit www.liatbenmoshe.com
Aero Marion: is on the board of the Vancouver Area Drug Users Network. Aero works with Our Streets and is a community researcher with the Carceral Housing Assemblage Research project.
Ryan Sudds: a settler on the unceded land of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh. He is an activist filmmaker and an organizer with Stop the Sweeps, which challenges the displacement of unhoused people from public spaces. He is recovering from a decade working in politics and has two kids. X: @StopSweepsVan
Moderator:
A.J. Withers, the Ruth Wynn Woodward Jr. Chair in Gender, Sexuality & Women鈥檚 Studies at SFU. They are long-time homelessness & housing community organizer and author of Fight to Win: Inside Poor People鈥檚 Organizing, A Violent History of Benevolence, with Chris Chapman, and Disability Politics and Theory (2nd Edition out in May) www.ajwithers.ca X: @theajwithers